1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a process cartridge for use in an image forming apparatus using an electrophotographic method or an electrostatic recording method.
Also, this invention relates to a mounting method of mounting a cleaning member on a cleaning device.
2. Related Background Art
An image forming apparatus, such as a printer, effects selective exposure on an image bearing member, which is an electrophotographic photosensitive member, uniformly charged by a charger to thereby form a latent image, visualizes the latent image with a developer (hereinafter referred to as the toner) by a developing device, and also transfers the toner image to a recording medium and fixes the toner image, thus accomplishing image recording. Any toner remaining on the image bearing member after the transfer is removed by a cleaning blade and the toner is stored in a cleaning container, and the next development is effected on the image bearing member now having a clean surface.
In recent years, it has been put into practice to make the image bearing member, the charger, the developing device, the cleaning device, a box containing waste toner therein, etc. integrally into a cartridge to thereby enable a user to load the main body of the apparatus with the process cartridge, thereby making the interchange of the parts of the image bearing member possible and making maintenance easy. Further, when the life of the image bearing member is extended and the number of printable sheets increases, the developing device, which becomes limited in its supplying capability, is made into an independent unit, and the whole apparatus is divided into a developing unit and an image bearing unit comprising the image bearing member, the charger and the cleaning device made into a unit, thus making the mounting thereof onto the main body of the apparatus and the maintenance thereof easy, and yet the respective main parts have come to be used in conformity to the lives thereof. In this image bearing unit, the waste toner produced by cleaning is stored in a cleaning container of a capacity capable of sufficiently containing the waste toner therein to the end of the life of the image bearing member, and is removed during the interchange of the image bearing unit.
Here, as the cleaning device, use is generally made of a blade member having a supporting portion of a metal plate and an abutting portion formed by an elastic member of rubber or the like, which is adapted to abut against the image bearing member with a predetermined inroad amount to thereby remove the waste toner. If at this time, the aforementioned inroad amount is inappropriate, bad cleaning will be caused or the blade will be torn off and therefore, the aforementioned inroad amount must be kept highly accurate.
In recent years, however, in order to obtain highly accurate images, the particle diameter of the toner tends to become minute, and in order to maintain the cleaning property for this toner, it has become necessary to keep the setting of the aforementioned inroad amount more highly accurate. In such a situation, it has become difficult to cope with the matter by only an improvement in the accuracy of the positioning portion of the cleaning member and a frame supporting and fixing it.